House GOP budget plan collapsing

Like an army that’s outrun its supply line, the Republican budget strategy in Congress shows almost daily signs of coming apart.

The central premise, as sold by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, was that Washington could wipe out deficits in 10 years and protect defense spending, all while embracing the lower appropriations caps dictated by sequestration.

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Four months later, it’s proving to be a bridge too far.

Only three of the 12 annual spending bills have even been debated — by far the worst record since the GOP took over the House.

Against their better judgment, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have been required to cut important investments in science, community development and foreign aid. Senate Republicans are peeling off in protest — setting up a crucial procedural vote at noon Tuesday on the transportation and housing budget.

Time is running short.

After the August recess just nine legislative days remain on the House calendar before the next shutdown crisis Oct. 1. Already there are discussions of retreating into a stopgap continuing resolution calibrated to the post-sequester appropriations level of $988 billion.

But this begs the question: Is the CR a bridge to a larger deal or just another ramp down to the “new normal” of sequestration that President Barack Obama, for one, will find hard to accept?

The president goes back to Knox College Wednesday for an economic speech billed as a bookend to one he gave at the Illinois campus as a young senator in 2005. In the years since, Obama has broken many hearts on the Appropriations Committees with his feckless approach. But the White House is adamant now that he will not stand by and watch his second term be bled to death by an endless succession of cuts.

Republicans are not without risk, too, with the $988 billion number. That’s $21 billion more than Ryan allowed in the House-passed budget and comes minus his defense increases. Most important, no CR alone can change the math this winter, when the Budget Control Act will kick back in — superseding Ryan’s budget and imposing deep new cuts on defense.

The fragile illusion of it all — like Cinderella’s coach turning back into a pumpkin — was underscored again last Wednesday at a House Republican meeting in the wake of the farm bill debacle.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had called together about 20 House conservatives to explore options on resurrecting the nutrition title — stripped out of the House bill. The Virginia Republican has been a strong advocate of more cuts but he was also candid in explaining that Ryan’s claim to save $125 billion by simply block-granting the program in 2019 was short of policy details.

According to two persons in the meeting, Cantor never said outright that the $125 billion was a “plug” — slang for a budget estimate without backing. But others in the conversation took it that way — and did use the term.

Indeed, to achieve that level of savings in a five-year period would require a one-third cut from what the Congressional Budget Office is currently projecting for food stamps. The loose assumption had been that total enrollment would somehow get back to 2008 levels by 2019. How to get there was never worked out.

“Details beyond what can be found in the budget resolution would be left to the Agriculture Committee,” a Ryan spokesman said.

For the House Appropriations Committee, plugs are a luxury it doesn’t have. Each of its bills must answer “how” to meet Ryan’s goals.

Republicans on this panel have not been shy of cutting. With the March sequestration order, nonemergency discretionary spending is already a full $100 billion below 2010 when Democrats were in power.

But the telltale strains are evident as the committee goes into territory now where it would not tread a year ago.

POLITICO went back to look. The contrast is striking, as these examples show.